#FFXIVINSTANCEDHOUSING

[NegativeS]

The housing system has always been a bit of a touchy topic when it comes to FFXIV—one that has only gotten more touchy as time passed. More and more players join the game, pay subs, and attempt to wedge themselves into the housing system, only to be sorely disappointed when they discover that the supply of open housing plots is limited by Square Enix’s unwillingness to upend their system. And I can understand why they wouldn’t want to upend this system. Nearly every person with a house right now is an almost guaranteed subscription, as leaving the game for one-and-a-half sub cycles means the loss of your plot of land and (the majority of) the gil that went into it. A pretty strong incentive to stay playing FFXIV for extended periods of time (or at least paying for it—a single 5 minute login every 44 days is enough to keep your house otherwise).

But I am of a mind that fostering animosity among your playerbase, even if it gets you income in the short term, is never a good idea. And it is clear to me that the animosity only continues to grow, especially as Dynamis was introduced and its wards become ever more full.

In this expansive textpost, I will be going over the pros and cons of the current state housing system, what people who cannot get into it are missing out on, what can be done to rectify it, how a solution can be implemented (spoilers: it’s instanced housing), and how we might compensate those negatively affected by a shift in the system.

1. What are the pros and cons of the current system?

The ward system, in which all available housing plots exist in an instanced ‘neighborhood’, has been the system of choice since housing was introduced. A limited amount of each size of plot, split up into 30 plots per ward, with 30 wards per housing district. Currently, players need to submit the cost of the plot into a lottery, after which a random person is selected to become the owner of the plot. Said owner now owns this plot of land indefinitely, so long as they ‘use’ their estate regularly enough.

It’s said that having these houses together in the same instance helps to foster a sense of community, like a neighborhood. People having reasons to enter an instance together will help them form bonds, especially when you factor in the metagame of decorating the exterior and interior of one’s house. People will commonly (as far as I have encountered) reach out to others via their message books to complement one another on their decorating, which helps form some semblance of acquaintanceship.

Having the available housing plots limited in this manner also places an inherent value on them. Players are able to open venues knowing not everyone is able to make their own, the outputs of crossbreeding garden plants are more valuable due to the scarcity of housing (and not everyone who participates in housing even cares about gardening), and probably the most impactful on the game as a whole, airship/submersible missions and FC crafting, which can produce some of the highest value MB-able items in the game. Also, it’s cool having something exclusive that other people might not be able to acquire.

On that second to last one, the scarcity of housing means that FCs are easily able to make profits to fund any events they might do, work on improving the decorations or size of their FC house, or just accrue as raw profit for personal reasons.

However…

It can be argued that not a lot of people really engage with their ward-mates at all anymore, as once a house is decorated there is little reason to return to the ward other than to check the garden every now and then, and even venues and FCs will commonly sequester themselves inside of their estates, unknown to the ward around them unless someone decides to peek inside on the off chance.

Depending on the server one is on, any gameplay tied to a housing plot or estate one might wish to engage in is entirely unreachable, as the established owners of the plots do not tend to want to simply give them up, considering there is no upkeep other than continuing to pay a subscription. This is exacerbated in some cases as some players are known to buy multiple houses on multiple characters, and in some cases on older servers, multiple houses on single characters. There are some cases (of which I’ve seen first hand) of FCs occupying most of or the entirety of entire housing wards, effectively denying housing to that number of players. And while some servers do have open housing plots—mainly smalls on Dynamis—people shouldn’t be expected to change servers to participate in a facet of the game, potentially needing to pay real money to do so and upending existing connections and FC communities in the process. Additionally, expecting every person to be content with a small plot is unrealistic.

And while auto-demolition exists as a solution to hopefully free up housing plots that go unused, this can also serve to inflame those who are lucky enough to get into the housing system. A house will be auto-demolished no matter the player’s circumstances in real life, so if a player is unable to sustain their sub for whatever reason, they may log in after a hiatus to find that their house—along with the gil that went into buying the land, the decorations they spent time setting up, and in extreme cases, the gil for the estate and the decorations themselves—completely gone and unrecoverable. Safe to say, such a loss of time, effort, and resources is not an excellent way to maintain player retention.

As more and more people join FFXIV, many find themselves up against the unbreachable barrier that is the current housing system. A new player’s choice of server is effectively random, and they may find themselves unfortunately unable to take part in the housing system in their server.

2. So, the system is imperfect. How can it be fixed?

The main problems people have with FFXIV’s housing system can be boiled down to price, scarcity, and transience. The cost of entry into the housing system is high (relative to the average amount of gil any player might be able to accrue in regular gameplay, especially for larger houses), the amount of effort one might need to put in to actually get into the system is high depending on the server and the desired plot, and once in, a player can easily lose all the gil and effort that went into it. This culminates in a system that is wholly unsatisfying to participate in for the average player, despite being one of the best forms of player expression and gil-making in the game.

Price is a problem that only really exists as a result of the other two, as any player is capable of accruing the necessary gil given enough time.

Scarcity can be solved by adding more plots to wards, more wards in general, or more housing districts, although unless they are regularly added (which they have not in the past) this will only result in the problem returning, albeit at a later time. Additionally, larger plots in new wards or districts are guaranteed to be claimed almost instantly, given how scarce they are.

Transience, though detrimental to people's experience, is a necessity for the system as it currently exists, as without auto demolition new players and FCs would be entirely incapable of acquiring land of their own after a certain point. And yet, there will always be people burned by the fact that they're unable to take any significant break from the game (or a break from paying for it) without losing their hard-earned gil and hard-decorated estates.

In my opinion, the best solution to the problems presented by the current ward system is to keep it... in tandem with the addition of a new instanced housing system.

In my mind, the implementation of such a system may be as such:

In every housing district, there will exist an NPC that acts as the Purveyor of Private Plots, allowing players to buy into the instanced housing system as well as access any existing instanced plots including their own (unless they have a private aetheryte).

To continue to encourage the use of wards, the prices of instanced plots of land should be higher; perhaps by 50%, just as a placeholder for now. Those with the means will be able to buy their instanced land, but those who just want a plot of land will hopefully easily be able to buy a cheaper one in a ward. This will hopefully go some way toward preserving the 'neighborhood'-ness of wards, while allowing those unwilling to deal with the lottery system an alternative. Additionally, ward plots may still have a measure of prestige associated with them, as they and their decorations would still be visible from the ward at large, without needing to enter yet another instance.

Once a player has the needed funds, they need to only inquire about purchasing instanced land at the Purveyor of Private Plots. Because every instanced plot is created when bought, there does not need to be a lottery or lottery period—once bought, the player can talk to the Purveyor again to enter their instance and begin to develop their land immediately.

Every housing district has three distinct types of instanced housing area—small, medium, and large respectively. Each district will also have their instanced housing area appear differently: Lavender Beds instances would be surrounded by thick trees, Goblet instances might be on a cliff near the main housing area, Mist instances might be on a secluded beach, Shirogane instances might be on their own isolated island away from the main host, and Empyreum instances might have their own gated-off part of Ishgard... or a snowy plot of land somewhere in Coerthas.

As said before, accessing an instanced plot of land as the owner is as simple as speaking to the NPC and traveling to the plot of land, similarly to how a player might access an apartment or FC private quarters. However, to prevent needing to scroll down a massive list of instanced houses to access one that a player may want to visit, each instanced house might have a code tied to them that can be input to access that plot. This code might be displayed on a player's Adventurer Plate if they desired (apart from the very limited search comment, of course), or shared at their discretion. Players can also limit whether or not their instance is open to the public if they so desire. Players can of course teleport freely to the houses of their friends, just as it works currently with the ward system.

Because people wouldn't be fighting over the instanced plots, they would not be subject to auto demolition.

These instanced plots otherwise function exactly the same as current ward plots, with decoration limited to the plot of land itself and within the estate.

Another solution would be to expand the existing apartment system by adding multiple sizes with multiple rooms, perhaps even with access to the outside (such as with a balcony or rooftop access) that would allow for the use of some outdoor furnishings. While this wouldn't solve every problem with the current housing system (such as the fact that apartments do not have customization exteriors), it would be a decent middle ground if Square is that desperate not to expand the housing plot system.

2.5. Potential game limitations of instanced housing

A common argument against instanced housing in the past was that it would add an undue load onto the server that small indie company Square Enix would be unable to bear. Houses, their decorations, and their remodels of course need to be stored somewhere in the server.

And yeah, I would agree...

If they didn't introduce Island Sanctuaries, a very primordial form of instanced housing that permits the use of outdoor decorations and some minor forms of customization, just... without the actual housing that people want.

And they're adding another version of Island Sanctuaries in DT! It obviously can't be that much of a burden on the servers.

Another argument is that houses can be considered guaranteed subscriptions, after a fashion, and that removing the incentive of continued subscriptions will negatively impact profits from FFXIV, and thus negatively impact the game.

And, yeah, I'm not inside of Square Enix, and I can't know exactly how much money they're making from this stuff at any one point. But, knowing how wasteful Square Enix is with their money, I can be hopeful that they'd be able to spare a crumb of their colossal income to improve this facet of the game.

I personally know that I'd be much more likely to pace myself and keep myself from burning (or boreding) out if I didn't have to worry about this damn house...

3. Why are some people so adamantly against instanced housing?

During my time on the forums, I've noticed that a decent number of people are pretty adamantly against the idea of instanced housing. Whenever the topic comes up, there are always a decent number of people speaking out against the idea, or in some cases, attacking the person who brought it up. I'll be responding to some of those arguments here. Paraphrased, of course.

Instead of adding instanced housing, they could just make the addition of new wards automatic as demand increases.

This would be a solution, in a way, but relies on people being content with what is available (most people would prefer a large or a medium, but the vast majority of currently available wards are small) to actually fill up existing wards to prompt the creation of more. Sure, houses would be available, but many would still not be happy.

Instanced housing would remove a major subscription incentive, losing Square Enix a lot of money.

To this, I only have to say... if the only thing keeping people in your game is sunk cost, maybe you should design your game better.

We don't need instanced housing, there are X plots available on Y server with nobody bidding on them, just go bid on them.

It's the player's fault for making their character on X server that they can't find any good housing plots.

1. This implies that people would be okay with switching servers. Not only would people be abandoning FC communities by doing so, but considering Square Enix can freely restrict DC travel for an indefinite amount of time, potentially locking one out from playing with their friends, this is an untenable solution.

2. Like I said before, a brand new player is not going to take housing availability into their choice of server, and by the time they might want to get into the system, it might be much too late for them to switch servers without significant loss.

3. Not everyone is content with the garbage small plot on the edge of the Goblet next to the low-resolution-textured wall. You know the one I'm talking about.

Instanced housing already exists... they're called apartments.

Apartments...

• ...cannot be FC headquarters.
• ...cannot have FC crafting or airship/submarine functionality.
• ...cannot partake in crossbreeding.
• ...do not have a customizable exterior.
• ...are small and cramped.
• ...have a very low furnishing/NPC limit.

It would feel much better if apartments were just a cheaper alternative to houses, rather than the only available option depending on the server.

Allowing any FC to have a house would drastically drive down the prices of FC workshop crafts and loot from airship/submarine expeditions, ruining the potential income of FCs.

Yes, it would. And personally, I don't really care, considering how many "FCs" are just fronts for gil selling RMTers.

But I know that many people do care.

A solution to this might be limiting the amount of airships or submarines an instanced FC house might be able to field at any one time. It would be a bad feeling artificial restriction, but it would work...

Another solution might be to make it so FCs cannot make instanced FC houses, and instead expand the amount of FC-only wards, considering there is now an infinite amount of available houses for players. I'd be okay with this.

Instanced housing would be soulless, and remove the community-feeling of wards.

That's subjective, but thankfully wards and instanced houses don't need to be mutually exclusive.

Also, depending on who you are, ward houses might already be soulless. Personally, I've seen a total of three of my 'neighbors' in the entire time I've had my house, and only because my house is right in front of an aetheryte shard + market board and bell.

People complaining about the current housing system are just mad that they're stuck with small plots.

And they're in the wrong for wanting larger houses... because...?

Look at it this way:

60 plots per ward (including the subdivisions), 30 wards per locale, 5 locales per server, makes 9000 plots per server, and 72,000 per standard logical data center.
288,000 in NA and JP, 144,000 in EU, and 45,000 in OC, makes a grand total of 765,000 houses available in the game as of now.

If each half ward has 20 smalls, 7 mediums, and 3 larges (based on the Goblet, unsure if this is different in other locales as I wasn't bothered to check), then that would make...
510,000 smalls,
178,500 mediums,
and 76,500 larges, across ALL servers.

Per server, there are 6,000 small plots, 2,100 medium plots, 900 large plots.

900. On servers that might have several tens of thousands of players.
76,500. Across the millions of people who play this game.

Not even counting characters who have multiple houses grandfathered into the system, accounts with multiple houses across multiple characters, and an untold amount of shell FCs and gil RMTers taking up space.

This is... okay to you?

X is a more pressing problem than this, Square Enix shouldn't touch housing until X is fixed!

Maybe. But I'm not hurting anyone by posting this thread.

Square doesn't care that the system is garbage, they're never going to change it.

Yoshi-P said himself that he doesn't like the idea of instanced housing, so it'll never happen.

You're probably right. But a Roe can hope.

And, hey, even a mountain will relent to opposition, given enough time...

(this section will be expanded as i find or receive more arguments)

4. Closing remarks...

I love FFXIV. A while ago, I considered it my forever MMO. But I've always wanted to get a house.

Thankfully, with help from my amazing FC, I was finally able to get into the system. Only to discover that I was now locked into it, unable to take a break lest I lose the gift so graciously given to me. Limited by the players around me through no fault of my own, simply because of the artificial scarcity that Square Enix put in place.

This is frankly an unacceptable state for any game system to be in, and I do hope that some significant change is made to it soon.

I make this thread hoping to consolidate the thoughts of forumgoers and those on social media that I have encountered over my years of playing FFXIV, to hopefully send a message to Square Enix that something significant needs to change on this front. Fostering animosity among your playerbase, even if it gets you income in the short term, is never a good idea.

Thank you for reading.

EDIT 1: Fixed my math--1350 is surprisingly not 1/10 of 9000
EDIT 2: Added note in part 3 about Yoshida apparently liking wards so much he'll never add instances.
EDIT 3: Added note about expanding the apartment system as a possible solution to part 2

[Dorito_Burrito]

I can't wait for the housing mains to come in here.

[AnimaAnimus]

Yoshida basically came out years ago and said that the reason we do not have instanced housing is not technical or anything, but because he prefers the wards. So, no matter what you say or how much sense it makes, we will not get it simply because Yoshi doesn't want it.

[PassinLay]

Yoshida basically came out years ago and said that the reason we do not have instanced housing is not technical or anything, but because he prefers the wards. So, no matter what you say or how much sense it makes, we will not get it simply because Yoshi doesn't want it.

This tbh, people can keep hating on people like me because we dislike the whole instanced housing thing, in the end, Yoshi P doesnt want it himself so we aint getting it, yall can make petitions and all you want, it wont do anything, he doesnt want it.

[Len_]

Small indie company please understand btw here's an unrelated video.
https://youtu.be/LJMNf2XSXEs?si=zNVXv9cRXc0oW_cX

[Khryseis_Astra]

Well if this is going to be the new mega thread, I’ll post some more arguments in favor from the other thread. And feel free to peruse the housing forum for the multiple ideas of how an instanced system could be added alongside the wards!

The statement was made that if we managed to get instanced housing, it would be a cash shop thing. It doesn’t have to be that way though. First instanced house? Free. The ward owners aren’t paying extra for their one personal house per account after all. Want more? Charge a retainer-like fee of $1-2 a month for extra houses. These would be basic instanced plots that operate the same as ward houses. Choose your size and city-state and get that area’s housing district environment as a generic background scenery, minus all the other houses cluttering up your view.

But it also opens up the possibility of eventually getting other areas to use as background scenery in the future, as well as creating new housing skins and themed furnishings to match. And maybe some of them would be “premium” cash shop things, but there’s no reason for that to be the only option. If part of the planned “housing mirage” is like suspected, and they are planning to create interior layouts that “remove the pillars,” then houses wouldn’t have to be tied to a particular neighborhood anymore. All those places you love that don’t have a housing district, and probably never will because they’re not main cities? Instanced makes it possible to have a plot there. And as we’ve seen with IS, instanced areas also allow things like furnishing “glamour” so you only need one physical item to use as many times as wanted, open air houses (they just need to let you place furnishings!), ability to change the ground and walkways independently of the buildings, etc.

I have a ward plot, but if I had the opportunity to have an instanced plot with the same (or more!) functionality, and the ability to change my background scenery? I’d definitely make the trade. And it could be done… other MMOs that don’t even require subscriptions have many instanced housing options, both free and cash shop.

[NegativeS]

Yoshida basically came out years ago and said that the reason we do not have instanced housing is not technical or anything, but because he prefers the wards. So, no matter what you say or how much sense it makes, we will not get it simply because Yoshi doesn't want it.

This tbh, people can keep hating on people like me because we dislike the whole instanced housing thing, in the end, Yoshi P doesnt want it himself so we aint getting it, yall can make petitions and all you want, it wont do anything, he doesnt want it.

Well, he can use the wards if he wants to. He's the director of the game, I'm sure he could get any plot he wanted to, with no auto-demo, and a free back massage every time he enters the estate.

However, his position means he doesn't have to deal with the ramifications of his game's horrible system. In fact, if you told me that he hasn't actually played the game since 6.0, I wouldn't be surprised.

It would do him well to at least hear out the people who don't like the wards. Or NA feedback in general. But, one step at a time.

The statement was made that if we managed to get instanced housing, it would be a cash shop thing. It doesn’t have to be that way though. First instanced house? Free. The ward owners aren’t paying extra for their one personal house per account after all. Want more? Charge a retainer-like fee of $1-2 a month for extra houses. These would be basic instanced plots that operate the same as ward houses. Choose your size and city-state and get that area’s housing district environment as a generic background scenery, minus all the other houses cluttering up your view.

Honestly, if it needs to be a shop thing, then I'm fine with it being a shop thing, so long as relatively cheap or a one-time purchase. Thal knows Square needs the money...

[Rueby]

Instanced housing has alot of potential and we already have it technically speaking.
The interior of your house doesn't even reflect the outside of your house- you can't look at your ward from within. It functionally is an instance.
Apartments are 'instanced'.

I see no reason why the player can't get upgradable apartments, it'd keep the wards and maybe drive more traffic there too if they manage to give any incentive to being in your house/apartment- if it becomes accessible to all.

We might even see more people opening up actual apartments as 'small venues' kinda, allowing someone who isn't lucky to get a house to at least have some kind of gil sink as well.

So far each subdivision has 60 houses, chances are, no one is in the ward, except 1 (sometimes few if FC house) afk. I always stay at my house because I decorated it and I love it. I personally like how quiet it is...but I also sympathize with people who really want a space to decorate and call home. Apartments/FC rooms feel too restrictive and with the amazing things people can do with housing (combining furniture) it feels...disappointing. Why interact with it at all?

Perhaps the ward system doesn't need to go away, but they need to add something to give players something. The limits on furniture need to rise across the board. Maybe introduce a furnishing item where maybe you gain rested EXP quicker at home/apartment or something, hell I don't know. I always thought something like the inn room in Kugane was amazing but the apartments we get are...disappointing. It'd be nice if we can choose to expand/upgrade what we have.

I'd love to do that for smalls. Why the smalls look like they have a second floor but instead we get a boring basement...

I don't know why people are allergic to the concept of instanced housing.

Also no for it being a shop thing. Stop trying to enable more predatory systems- because you know it won't be a one time purchase. Retainers as an extra sub is enough...

[NegativeS]

Perhaps the ward system doesn't need to go away, but they need to add something to give players something. The limits on furniture need to rise across the board. Maybe introduce a furnishing item where maybe you gain rested EXP quicker at home/apartment or something, hell I don't know. I always thought something like the inn room in Kugane was amazing but the apartments we get are...disappointing. It'd be nice if we can choose to expand/upgrade what we have.

Something like this would be very cool, and would give people a reason to spend time at their estates outside the other 44 days out of 45. However, I do worry about tying other types gameplay to the estates, however minor, when the cost of entry is too high for those to whom it would matter most.

[Kaurhz]

Honestly they would resolve a lot of problems if they just expanded the apts. Give an option to purchase a small apt, 500K, and then give an option to purchase a large apt., (not the same size as an actual house large), and then allow people to progress towards extensions that permit gardening (and no I don't mean the teeny tiny interior pots)

This tbh, people can keep hating on people like me because we dislike the whole instanced housing thing, in the end, Yoshi P doesnt want it himself so we aint getting it, yall can make petitions and all you want, it wont do anything, he doesnt want it.

This does not mean that he wouldn't change his mind behind a system.

Won't be the first time and it won't be the last time this happens either.